Political commentator Hasan Piker explains endorsement of El-Sayed for US Senate
The race for the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s U.S. Senate race has been one of the most fascinating in the country. It drew national attention when controversial political commentator Hasan Piker rallied with Abdul El-Sayed on college campuses.
Piker has millions of followers on social media, largely made up of people under the age of 30.
The move was immediately met with condemnation from El-Sayed’s opponents – Congresswoman Haley Stevens, and State Senator Mallory McMorrow.
Since then, El-Sayed has steadily risen in the polls.
In a conversation this week, WDET’s Russ McNamara asked Piker what he seeks in an ideal candidate.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Hasan Piker: A candidate self-identifying as a socialist would be great, but in the absence of that, I care about where their primary focus is. Are they going to center the needs of the working class in their agenda, or are they malleable to corporate interests? And those are the things that I pay attention to.
I think some of the telltale markers of a candidate’s responsiveness to the masses is oftentimes their attitude on the issue of Israel, which is a 90-10 issue on the side of the voters within the Democratic Party, but a 10-90 issue seemingly when it comes to Congress.
Another one is Medicare for all. The private healthcare provider industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and they spend a great deal of money to ensure that Medicare for all is not implemented, and I think that’s another great litmus test to see if a candidate will actually put the needs and the interests of the working class first over their interest in farming campaign contributions from these moneyed interests.
Ed. Note – Piker recorded this interview while in New York City to support the Democratic Socialist candidates in their primary election. All won.
Russ McNamara, WDET: Then it sounds like Abdul El-Sayed checks a lot of those boxes.
Piker: Yes, absolutely.
McNamara: Was it all part of that that got you to come out onto the campaign trail for him earlier this year?
Piker: Yeah, Abdul El-Sayed doesn’t call himself a socialist, but I still like him quite a bit because I think he’s a fighter, and that’s what Americans need right now. Americans need fighters in the Senate, they need fighters in the House of Representatives, fighters that will put their interests first, fighters that won’t even shy away from sometimes telling the rest of the Democratic Party—not just the Republicans—that the path that they’re heading down is wrong.
Abdul obviously demonstrated that interest, and he has been a fighter for Medicare for all for a very long time, I mean, he wrote a book about it. His gubernatorial run was around the implementation of Medicare for all, so he has established a lot of trust in these communities, and I trust them as well.
McNamara: Kind of along those lines, when you came to Michigan in the spring, there was tremendous outcry in some circles. Congresswoman Haley Stevens said you were ‘divisive.’ Mallory McMorrow compared you to the white supremacist Nick Fuentes. What is your response to things like that? Because you seem to hear it a lot.
Piker: Unfortunately, this is the way that politics is conducted in this country. In most circumstances, people rely on the rest of the electorate not really knowing anything about me, and in the past this might have actually worked, because mainstream media and local institutions were capable of successfully gatekeeping outsider candidates and also outsider media figures.
Nowadays it’s a little bit different, especially because there’s so much diversity of choice in where people can get their news from, so people can come to me directly and figure out what I’m actually about, so that was one of the reasons why that smear campaign failed spectacularly, because people could just tune into my broadcast, or people were maybe somewhat familiar with what I represented, and they understood that these smears were simply being thrown in my direction, not because of any serious anti-Semitism that I’ve ever displayed.
I have not; I’ve actually combated anti-Semitism my entire professional media career and will continue to do so. I find it repugnant. It’s an odious form of bigotry, just like every other form of bigotry, including Islamophobia.
But the other reason why this smear campaign did not work is because a lot of people intrinsically now understand in the aftermath of three years of genocide, and a lot of establishment Democrats, and certainly the entirety of the Republicans, criticizing those who speak out against this genocide with these heinous accusations, a lot of people understand that this is not a person that is actually bigoted in any way, shape or form. As a matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite. This is an anti-genocide advocate, and that’s part of the reason why he’s being called an anti-Semite.
Now, that dangerous conflation actually foments more anti-Semitism, which is, ironically, something that I’ve discussed quite a bit as well, for many, many years prior to October 7, and continue to do so now. But that’s why it didn’t work. It demonstrably failed, right? It fell flat on its face.
People started looking at Abdul’s campaign, people started hearing what he was saying, and they liked it… He was in third place before this smear campaign started, and now he’s comfortably in first place.
Abdul El-Sayed is a wonderful candidate. He has solid fundamentals. He’s probably one of the best candidates in the Democratic primary cycle this midterm season. Rhodes scholar, doctor, worked for Detroit Public Health, spent his entire professional life trying to heal people, and on top of that, he is against the genocide that Israel has committed, and that’s consistent with his values, consistent with my values as well, and yet he was not receiving a lot of media attention, that race in and of itself was not receiving a lot of media attention… and I guess Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow stepped on a landmine there and accidentally nationalized and publicized this (Michigan Senate) primary, and people actually started tuning in.
People started looking at Abdul’s campaign, people started hearing what he was saying, and they liked it. And lo and behold, he was in third place before this smear campaign started, and now he’s comfortably in first place.
McNamara: It seems like many within the Democratic Party still haven’t fully accepted the role Israel’s genocide in Gaza played in the 2024 election. I recently talked with pollster Adam Carlson about a recent Zenith research survey he did, and it had showed that Haley Stevens would lose a significant portion of people who identify as progressives in the general election, should she make it through the primary, less so for El-Sayed and McMorrow. Do you think this country’s views have shifted enough, and now unconditional support for Israel is seen as a political liability?
Piker: Absolutely, and that’s precisely the reason why AIPAC and AIPAC subsidiaries never actually reveal that the candidates that they’re fundraising for are pro-Israel. None of those ads, whether they be attack ads against their opponents or the ads in favor of their hand-selected candidates, ever mention this candidate’s point of view on Israel. If Israel was such a popular position, then they would proudly declare it. AIPAC wouldn’t need to use this opaque funding structure and find shell corporations to funnel money into by way of their donor network under the guise of United Democracy Fund, or Elect Women Fund, that was the one they used in Illinois in the Chicago primaries.
They do that because I think everyone understands that pro-Israel politics is demonstrably unpopular, and it’s only going to get less popular from this point on. I often throughout the genocide would say: going forward, today is the most popular Israel will be. Tomorrow, Israel will be less popular than it was today, and yesterday Israel was more popular than it is today. And that has been resilient.
There are constant demands for censorship against prominent critics of Israel.
That (pro Israel) attitude has shifted, and it will continue to shift as more and more people not only come to terms with Israel playing a destabilizing role in the region, but also the unbelievable amount of arrogance in display by those who are defenders of Israel and defenders of Israeli foreign policy.
I think that is oftentimes a less discussed aspect of the reason as to why Americans are frustrated with Israel, and it’s because there are constant demands for censorship against prominent critics of Israel. Some of those censorship attempts are actually successful, de-platforming initiatives that take place. I myself was banned from traveling to the United Kingdom only last month, and it was directly a consequence of my criticisms of Israel.
This kind of censorious attitude, especially when it’s the overwhelming majority’s position, is going to be unbelievably frustrating, and it’s only going to breed more enmity and hostility against the State of Israel. And outside of that there is this level of entitlement to unlimited funds coming from the United States of America, funds and weapons that Israel deploys on Palestinian civilians, on Lebanese civilians, as they’re doing currently, as they’re in the process of trying to disrupt the memorandum of understanding in a longstanding ceasefire negotiation that we might actually finally implement with Iran.
These kinds of destabilizing initiatives paired up with hubris, unbelievable entitlement and arrogance come across as very frustrating to the average American who is maybe uninitiated with the actions of Israel.
McNamara: Influencers are often brought up as a way for people to connect with younger voters. As you know, Democrats tried to do this to very mixed success at the DNC two years ago, but to you, what is the best way to gain the attention and the vote of the mythical younger voter?
Piker: I think it’s policies, ironically enough. In the post 2024 autopsy that was being conducted in public, a lot of Democrats went to mainstream media and decided the reason why Donald Trump won was because of Joe Rogan—and Joe Rogan was obviously the catch-all term for the podcast circuit, the manosphere.
Now, is the podcast circuit of the manosphere influential, especially in terms of converting young men to voters? Certainly, but ironically enough, they chose me as the left version of Joe Rogan because of my audience, because of the success I’ve seen in the independent sphere as the largest left content creator in these spaces that are inundated with far right and right-wing messaging.
The most significant issue is that the Democratic Party is not defined by a policy prescription for the problems that the working class faces in this country.
I told them over and over again, this is not an issue that you can podcast your way out of, that I myself am not the Joe Rogan of the left, and that Joe Rogan could potentially be the Joe Rogan of the left, and was the Joe Rogan of the left at some point when he endorsed Bernie Sanders. And that ultimately the problems that the Democratic Party are facing do not revolve around their lack of funding in messaging initiatives. That’s one element of the issue, but it’s not the most significant one.
The most significant issue is that the Democratic Party is not defined by a policy prescription for the problems that the working class faces in this country, and when they’re not defining themselves on those terms with left populous economic solutions: Medicare for all, an initiative in the direction of publicly funded housing, federal jobs guarantee, free college, these bold and somewhat radical agenda items that I think a lot of Americans are on board with.
Instead of doing that, the Democratic Party is constantly finding itself in a defensive posture against Republican culture war agenda items, and by not having a vision in the affirmative, they are allowing the Republican party to define the Democratic party, and that’s the reason why they keep losing. So it comes back to policies at the end of the day, because that’s the fundamental principle of theoretical democracy. We are going to vote an elected representative to represent our interests.
“What will you offer me?” This is the question that I think a lot of people understandably ask their elected representatives in the Democratic party, and their answers have so far been insufficient. I hope that this sequence of electoral defeats will light a fire under the Democratic Party, so that they don’t shy away from a more bold agenda, a more bold vision for change, especially because there’s tremendous appetite in the base of support for said bold agenda of change that centers the needs of the working class first and does not get bogged down with unnecessary culture war distractions.